1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to capsulated medical equipment that is shaped like a capsule and that moves within a body cavity to perform examination or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, endoscopes and other medical equipment have been proposed for examining an intracavitary region or the like. Moreover, ordinary endoscopes are such that an insertion unit alone is inserted into a body cavity in order to perform endoscopic examination or the like. Medical equipment including a capsulated body that is shaped like a capsule and inserted into a body cavity in order to perform examination or the like has been disclosed in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-91860.
In this type of capsulated medical equipment, the capsulated body may presumably be clogged at a stenosed region within a body cavity. If the capsulated body is clogged, it must be collected as soon as possible.
However, the related art described in the foregoing publication has not disclosed a countermeasure permitting early-stage detection of the clogged state of the capsulated body.
Moreover, a publication No. WO99/30610 of an unexamined international application under PCT discloses a related art that detects whether the acceleration in an axial direction is equal to or smaller than a predetermined value. If the acceleration is equal to or small than the predetermined value, a powering unit is disconnected for fear redundant image data may be acquired.
The above related art does not detect the clogged state of the capsulated body.